stray bacon and a praying mantis

High on the list of the most disgusting things to happen to me in over six years of being a mother: this episode from yesterday.

We were on the driveway, with strollers loaded for a family walk, when I reached into the nearby van in search of a few extra tissues for the resident runny nose. There were no tissues, but there was a container of baby wipes. It felt a little on the dry side, but seemed to still hold a good ten wipes: perfect for wiping noses. I pulled out one wipe and then started to pull out another. It got a little stuck, as wipes do when they are bunched together. I pulled harder, and extracted a wipe encasing–a long, thick-cut strip of bacon.

It had been cooked, I think, and was surprisingly well-preserved, except for a dark spot or two. Is it possible that, in some hurry to leave the house a number of weeks ago, I put an uneaten strip of bacon into a still-usable package of baby wipes–and then proceeded to forget about it and use those wipes for normal baby-wipe tasks? Either that, or some packages of wipes now come with factory-installed bacon.

You’re welcome. Happy Monday.

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In less gag-inducing, but still unusual, news: we’ve had two backdoor visits from a praying mantis.

It was waiting for us one morning when I returned from a walk with the younger two. E kept a fairly respectful distance, but B was entranced.

He had a lot to discuss with his friend the mantis. “Where are you going, Praying Mantis? What are you doing? Hi, little Praying Mantis!”

“WOW, Mama! It’s so cooool! It looks like he’s praying!”

We examined the mantis more closely (using a stick–I’m not that brave) and then helped it climb back onto the wall. B said, “HOW does he DO that?!”

B thought his new friend had taken up permanent residence on our back patio, and was crestfallen the next time we returned and found it gone. It did reappear a couple of days later, as a special treat. B resorted to asking me to build a praying mantis out of his Duplo Legos. (In the past few weeks, he’s also requested a dragon, a garbage truck–with a hole for the garbage, no less–and a street sweeper. He has raised the bar on Lego creations.) He pointed out that we should put pink blocks underneath the green, since we had noticed the mantis possessed a pink underbelly. He contented himself with his Lego mantis, but every so often they remember the real thing, and we climb the back steps to choruses of “WHERE did the praying mantis go?!”